The truth is non-partisan

Here are notes from my daughter Annelise about the American Revolution:

In August of 1765, as a result of the Stamp Act, Bostonians took to
the streets and over a two week period destroyed the homes of the new
stamp master, Andrew Oliver, and Thomas Hutchison, the lieutenant
governor and chief judge. Oliver was Hutchison's brother-in-law. The
riots had begun with Oliver being hung in effigy on an elm tree across
from the market. Then the mob marched to Oliver's house and went on a
rampage. Two weeks later the mob destroyed the mansion of Hutchison.
Sam Adams sat back and watched the riots occur, but following the
destruction of Hutchison's home in his paper the Boston Gazette he
condemned the actions and called for calm. The leader of the mob,
Ebenezer Mackintosh, a twenty-eight-year old shoemaker from southend
Boston, was arrested but released. The council was afraid of the mob.
A three hundred pound reward for the mob's leader went unclaimed.
The result of the riots in Boston, however, was that stamp masters in
every colony except Georgia refused to take their positions.

In the meantime in Virginia, Patrick Henry had been elected to the
House of Burgess. Within nine days of his appointment, the young
legislator proposed five resolutions against the Stamp Act, including
one which stated that only a colony's legislature could tax its
citizens. The older members of the House were outraged, but Henry's
resolutions passed. The next day after he had gone home, the
remaining legislators voted to remove the fifth controversial
resolution. However, Henry's resolutions were soon published
including a sixth would claimed that anyone who defended the
Parliament's right to impose taxes was an enemy of Virginia.

In Massachusetts a month after the rioting Governor Bernard convened
the House stating the Stamp Act would be enforced beginning in
November. Bernard thought the answer to the unrest was to send
American representatives to Parliament. London offered to send 100
troops to Boston, but Bernard said that wasn't enough. On October 1,
1765 twenty-seven delegates from the colonies attended a Stamp Act
congress in New York. Massachusetts was represented by two of
Bernard's men and James Otis. Otis's behavior had become so erratic
that at sometimes he supported liberty and at other times he opposed
it. When the Stamp Act congress adjourned on October 25, they had
approved 13 resolutions, including one calling for full liberties that
were vital to the "prosperity and happiness of these colonies." The
same day the Massachusetts House passed its own resolutions insisting
that the colonists were "unalienably entitled to those essential
rights in common with all men."

A month after the Stamp Act was to take effect, Andrew Oliver had
still not resigned his position as stamp master in Massachusetts.
Oliver received a letter inviting him to stand before the Liberty Tree
(where his effigy had once hung) and tender his resignation before the
people of Boston. Unable to think of a way to avoid going, Oliver
stood before a crowd of some two thousand people and in the rain read
his resignation. At about the same time stamp masters in other
colonies were also resigning.

Governor Bernard expected that the colonists would boycott those
activities that required stamps, but instead they went on with their
activities as if the Stamp Act didn't exist. Tory shipowners faced a
tough choice. They didn't want to defy Parliament, but they also
didn't want to have their homes leveled by the Sons of Liberty.
Finally, they asked permission to load their vessels without the
required stamps. The Custom House opened and the ships cleared
harbor.

The courts faced a similar dilemma. Samuel Adams asked his cousin,
John Adams, to represent the view of the legal profession before the
Governor's Council. Finally, Bernard left judges to decide whether to
open. Hutchinson refused but compromised by temporarily resigning his
position as chief justice to his younger brother. The courts opened
and went about business without the required stamps. Soon Parliament
realized that the Stamp Act wasn't working so decided to rescind the
Act. Parliament could undo the damage of the past year, but they
couldn't "repeal the new spirit in America."

Source:

Langguth, A.J. Patriots: The men who started the American Revolution.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988

Here are notes from my daughter Annelise about the American Revolution:

Patrick Henry was a young lawyer when he took on the Virginia
establishment and won. The Anglican Church was the state church in
Virginia. All citizens were required to attend at least two
communions a year and Anglican clerics were paid a fixed amount set by
law. If they didn't get the required amount, the clergymen could sue.
In many communities the salaries were paid with tobacco. After several
years of crop failures, several clerics sued for back pay. In one
case the court awarded double the salary in damages. When the
minister in Hanover sued the town council and plantation owners,
Patrick Henry represented the defendants. After a highly charged
trial, Henry had won a moral victory that established his reputation
in fighting the established order. Technically he had lost, but
damages were set at only one penny and the result was widely perceived
to be a victory for the independence movement.

In 1764 the English Parliament passed a new Sugar Tax which reduced
the amount of the tax but made enforcement stricter. Even Governor
Bernard warned Parliament that the tax would hurt commerce in
Massachusetts. In the past taxes had been used to regulate trade in
ways that favored Britain, but this new tax Otis argued tax what the
colonies produced. Boston's Town Meeting asked Samuel Adams to draft
instructions for the town's four delegates to the House of
Representatives. Otis wrote a letter to Massachusetts's agent in
London to seek repeal of the Sugar Act and prevent the passage of a
proposed law called the Stamp Act. The letters were also to be sent
to the other colonies, but Bernard shut down the session to prevent
their distribution. However, Otis's letter was widely circulated and
delegates from other colonies began arriving in Boston with their own
protests. Their meetings provoked the reaction Bernard had feared.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Grenville went to the British
Parliament, saying America must contribute to its won defense.
Parliament, he said, had the right to impose taxes. Benjamin Franklin
suggested that England should indicate how much money it needed and
let the colonies decide how they would raise it. However, Parliament
went ahead with the Stamp Tax which required colonists buy stamps for
every American newspaper, legal document, license or bond. They would
also need stamps for any pamphlet, almanac, college diploma, deck of
cards or pair of dice. Notable among the few voices that protested in
Parliament was that of Isaac Barre who had served in America during
the French and Indian Wars. He said the behavior of Britain's
officials toward Americans "on many occasions has caused the blood of
those sons of liberty to recoil within them." When reports reached
America, hundreds in each colony were "proud to learn they were being
called Sons of Liberty."

Source:

Langguth, A.J. Patriots: The men who started the American Revolution.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Here are notes from my daughter Annelise about the American Revolution:

When George III came to power as King of England, he was determined to
regain the previous power English kings once had. Had he retained
William Pitt as Prime Minister problems in the colonies might have
been resolved. Instead he appointed George Grenville, who was
determined to pay off Britain's debt from its wars with France. Who
better to tax than the colonies that the motherland had protected.
Meanwhile in the colonies there was growing unrest among the colonial
legislatures that viewed London as distant and their own power as
equal to the British Parliament.

In Boston, Samuel Adams was building a following among the shopkeepers
and shipworkers. He was a writer and publisher of the weekly Public
Advertiser. Rather than seek after riches, he chose to live an austere
life with little concern for materialism. He mocked men like Thomas
Hutchinson who held to the notion of social divisions in society.
Samuel's father and others in the Massachusetts House had established
the Land Bank as a means of revitalizing the economy. While
Hutchinson demanded payment in gold, the Land Bankers offered a
floating currency backed by their own real estate. In 1741, the
British Parliament declared the Land Bank illegal and charged its
directors with financial crimes. It was this struggle that helped
form Samuel's views about politics.

In 1756 Samuel Adams was elected as one of five general tax collectors
in the colony. When Boston was going through hard times Samuel would
always defer the collections. Soon he was accused of keeping taxes
for himself which was obviously not true because of his frugal way of
life. In the meantime Hutchinson and the other conservatives (dubbed
Tories by the Whigs or patriots) attempted to get rid of the town hall
meetings in Boston. In 1760 the Tories formed a new caucus that
almost defeated the original caucus of patriots in a town hall
meeting. In 1763 the Tories were determined to take over control of
the town hall meeting. However, with Samuel Adam's leadership, eleven
hundred men turned out to vote, soundly defeating the Tories and
saving the town hall meetings. Sam Adams was to play an important
role in bringing the colonies to rebellion.

Source:

Langguth, A.J. Patriots: The men who started the American Revolution.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Here are notes from my daughter Annelise about the American Revolution:

In the mid-1700s New England merchants were running a successful but
illegal rum business. Sea captains bought the molasses in the
Caribbean from the French and Dutch instead of the British, avoiding
British taxes at the point of purchase. The molasses were then
smuggled to New England where 60 distillers made them into rum. The
colony depended on this business as well as other smuggling. They
feared that a clampdown would bring about a depression, where all but
the wealthiest would be affected. The British crown, represented by
Governor Francis Bernard in Boston, wanted the taxes so sought to
catch the smugglers by using "writs of assistance." These writs
enabled British customs officers to enter any colonist's home with no
advance notice, no probable cause and no reason given.

In 1761 James Otis, a Boston lawyer, came to the defense of merchants
and rum runners claiming that the writs were unlawful. He used the
English common law, showing that English liberty provided freedom at
home. "A man's house is his castle,' he said. If a man behaved
quietly, he should be protected from unlawful searches. John Adams
listened in awe to Otis's five hour defense and left convinced that
Britain's politicians were trying to take complete control over the
colonies' finances and politics. John Adams later claimed: "The child
independence was then and there born,[for] every man of an immense
crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take
arms against writs of assistance."

Thomas Hutchinson, a Bernard appointment and one of the wealthy and
privileged, sat as chief justice in Boston. He first delayed the
decision on the writ case and then persuaded the other justices to
rule against the merchants and citizens of Boston. For the next 10
years Otis battled Hutchinson and the British establishment in Boston
from his seat in the Massachusetts legislature. Speaking of Otis, John Adams
stated: "I have been young and now I am old, and I solemnly say I
have never known a man whose love of country was more ardent or
sincere, never one who suffered so much, never one whose service for
any 10 years of his life were so important and essential to the cause
of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770." The phrase
"Taxation without representation is tyranny" is usually attributed to
Otis. Otis would have been a more powerful influence in the coming
Revolution except that as he got older he became senile and his
behavior became more erratic. He is said to have fought at Bunker
Hill. He died in 1783 from a strike of lightening while standing on
his sister's doorstep.

Sources:

Langguth, A.J. Patriots: The men who started the American Revolution.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

Ridpath, John Clark. James Otis, the pre-revolutionist. Project
Gutenberg. 1 Nov. 1996. 29 Sept. 2007
<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/722>.

Even President Bush is predicting that Hillary Clinton will be the
Democratic candidate.

It's not surprising with the star billing Hillary gets.

Earlier this week Politico ran a piece describing how the Clinton
campaign deals with the press. And it's more celebrity than
politician.

Clinton's campaign had a negative piece removed from Gentlemen's
Quarterly earlier this summer. The article by Josh Green, a writer
with Atlantic Monthly, described infighting in the Clinton team.

The Clinton campaign pressured GQ by saying run this piece and you
won't get a feature article later this year about Bill Clinton. The
article about Bill will be a cover piece that features him as man of
the year. Bowing to pressure GQ canned the negative piece in favor of
the cover article.

The reason is that Bill Clinton (and Hillary as well) have star
quality. He sells magazines, but most importantly his name and image
sell advertisers' products. And advertising pays the bills.

The Politico piece says that the Clinton's are unique among
politicians in their celebrity status. When Hillary announced her
candidacy she got a week's worth of news coverage on the major
networks. Recently all the Sunday morning network talk shows had her
on their programs all on the same day. (Usually they won't interview
the same person one of the other networks is interviewing.)

Politico also says the Clintons can offer the media greater access to
Hillary in exchange for not giving as much coverage to another
candidate.

Novelist George Saunders is writing the Clinton story for GQ. He told
his hometown paper the Syracuse Post-Standard in July that he was
planning to travel with the former president to tour Clinton
Foundation projects in Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and South Africa.

"It seems like [Clinton's] gift, one of his gifts, is everybody likes
him and knows him, so he can get people in a room and make things
happen," Saunders told the Syracuse paper. "I just like the idea that
at this elderly stage of life, you can go and get your doors blown
off." Saunders said he voted for Bill Clinton twice. It seems this
qualifies him for writing about Clinton.

See the Politico story at
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=390A6C6D-3048-5C12-008D860FC0899A91

Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney has written UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon calling on the the United Nations to revoke an invitation
to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad to speak to the General
Assembly next week. If he should appear in the United States, he
should be "greeted with an indictment under the Genocide Convention,"
wrote Romney. See Romney's letter at
http://www.mittromney.com/img/pdf/UN_Letter.pdf.

Romney says the Iranian president is guilty of Genocide because of his
regime's call for the destruction of Israel, for support of
Hezbollah's terror campaign, and defying the world community in its
pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran is also supporting Shia militia
extremists and violence that is taking the lives of American soldiers
in Iraq and undermining the Iraqi government.

Romney thinks President Ahmadinejad's threats "about wiping Israel off
the map" and Iran's support for terrorist actions against Israel
warrant indictment under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. The
Convention was used for the first time to bring Rwandan leaders to
justice.

Finally, Romney says that, if the UN fails to confront the Iranian
regime, the United States must reconsider its level of support and
funding to the United Nations.

Iran's state-owned Fars news agency said Monday that the president has
been granted a visa to attend the session and would be in the U.S. for
three days beginning Sept. 23. It said several members of
Ahmadinejad's entourage were still awaiting visas.

Ahead of previous visits to the U.N. by Ahmadinejad, critics called on
the State Department to deny him a visa.

Under a 1947 "headquarters agreement" establishing the permanent seat
of the U.N. in New York City, the U.S. gave foreign delegates
unimpeded access to a demarcated "headquarters district."

The Reagan administration in 1988 denied PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat a
visa, citing his "associations with terrorism." The General Assembly
reacted by voting to hold a special session in Geneva, which Arafat
addressed.